The Lost Tribe by Edward Marriott

Author:Edward Marriott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250108968
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2017-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

11

I woke to an extraordinary noise—long, curling arcs building and fading away. It sounded like a hunting horn, as if the master of a fox hunt was standing in the middle of the village in his red coat and black breeches, a single-call brass cornet to his lips. It came again, four, five, six times. Beside me, in our tiny cupboard partition, off the main room, Dunstan moaned grumpily.

After a night of rain, the sound carried clear and bright across the still morning. It sounded urgent, like a call to arms, yet I could hear no voices, no gathering crowds. Still half asleep, I believed this was Herod calling the Liawep to church, but how many hunting horns could there be in Papua New Guinea? More likely a gourd, blown to announce some dim-remembered ritual.

It was barely dawn. I dressed in a hurry, hoping to catch the musician, leaving Dunstan snuffling in his sleep, his head back, mouth agape. The carriers had relit the fire and were sitting around it, trying to warm themselves. When I stepped through them they looked up like ghosts, their faces ash-gray.

Outside, the light was choked and groggy. The mud was slippery like potters’ clay and, as I struggled up to the level ground, I could see pure white clouds, the rain wrung from them, breaking up in the valleys below. The mountain that rose up behind the village was sunk under cloud. The light was pale and early, seeping into the day.

The sound had stopped. I looked around. Across the helipad from Herod’s house I saw another straw dwelling, its roof smoking; even at this hour, people were awake, beginning their days. Uphill, the village disappeared into mist. I walked on up toward the smaller, central house.

As I neared I saw a man on the log fence that divided the village, sitting with his head bowed. I crossed the flattened dirt slowly. Only when I came close did I see it was Herod. He stared at his hands, mournful like a little boy parted from his friends, an old baseball cap turned backward on his head.

Without looking up, he held out the object in his lap. It was a beautiful brass horn, three feet long, with a thick-lipped silver mouthpiece—the kind that demanded dedication, the musician standing with his feet set wide apart and hands halfway up the stem. At the end it widened gently, flowering into a lily mouth. But he’d not looked after it. Its surface was scratched and dull like tin cutlery; the perfect glide of the trumpet sweep was flawed by a dent where it had been dropped.

“It’s lovely. It was you playing?”

“Yes.” He stared blankly at my knees. “It means I am holding a service. They can all hear it.”

“So where are they?”

“I do not know. Perhaps they think I am still away hunting.”

“We’ll be there,” I said, suddenly sorry for him. I climbed on to the logs and sat beside him to wait. He handed me the horn. It was warm and sticky where he’d held it.

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